She waded through water that reached her knees, desperately fighting to push against the swelling tide while, in the back of her mind, knowing that it was futile. The shelters were closed by now, there was nothing she could do.

Taylor choked back a sob as she tripped over something and nearly fell into the pouring waters clogging the street. When she looked down it was to see a man's back, his head bobbing under the flow, one arm pinned between a wrecked car and a streetlight.

She looked away, then pushed on. Her hands came up to clutch at the neck of her hoodie, a desperate attempt to stop the constant rain from plunging down her front and to keep her hands from trembling. Under her breath, the girl was muttering a litany to the waterlogged city. "Almost there, almost there."

An explosion rocked the Bay and she almost paused before thinking better of it. If she stopped for every explosion, for every bright beam of searing light, then she would be rooted in place, and if that happened she would die.

The shelter nearest Winslow was just a little ways away now, maybe a block or two, she couldn't tell through the walls of rain coming down around her. She tried to wipe her eyes clear but it was useless, seconds later her vision was fuzzy once more and her glasses were too wet to really help.

It was supposed to be a good day. Sunday was quiet, a day when she didn't need to go to school, where she could stay at home and relax and forget about everything. She had walked to the groceries, just to pick up a few things, to get out of the house which felt too big and too quiet when her dad wasn't there. A bit of a walk, a couple of bags with bread and fruit and a few essentials; just a nice day with maybe a small drizzle of spring rain.

She had left the bags somewhere behind her, lost in the panic when the sirens had first started to wail.

"Stupid, I'm so stupid," she whispered.

Another explosion, this one so close that she could feel the thrum of it in her chest, then the ground started to rock and shake, the waters around her dropping down until they barely reached her ankles and she almost tripped over the sudden loss of pressure against her legs.

Taylor looked around, wide-eyed as she took in the shops and apartments buildings around her. There were more bodies on the street and piles of detritus that had been carried by the waves.

For a moment she had hope. Maybe the heroes had done something, maybe the battle was over?

A blur of red shot past her, fast and hard enough that she felt her hair and sodden clothes shift at its passing.

There was a thump behind her.

When she turned it was to see a familiar person, crumpled against the side of a building. Velocity hacked and coughed, blood running down his chin. Her back was pressed into the brick side of a shop, a few cracks running out from where he had impacted the wall. His breathing slowed and the hero slumped.

"Velocity Deceased, EM-5," came a crackling voice from the bracelet wrapped around the hero's wrist.

Taylor felt her chest clamping up and her legs shook so hard she nearly fell to her knees. She wanted to scream, to sob and cry and be somewhere else. She was a girl used to fear, used to torment and being shat on. She had survived the locker and the school doing nothing, Emma's betrayal and the almost worse way her father had grown more and more detached. But this was worse in so many ways.

"Oh god," she whimpered.

With a rumbling like a million boulders tumbling down a hill, a wave of water ten feet tall rushed around the nearest intersection.

Taylor couldn't find her voice, couldn't say anything as she saw the monster riding the wave. Four green eyes locked onto her.

It was so fast, so huge, like a train coming off the rails, an unstoppable force of nature that was seconds away from wiping her off the face of the earth.

"Stop!"

The wave split.

Taylor flinched back, watching her oncoming death miss her by inches as the torrent was sliced apart like something out of the old testament.

The waters receded a little, leaving her standing in a circle three paces across, her feet on dry asphalt while water dripped down from her and puddled at her feet. Around her rose a wall of seething, always-moving water, frothing and bubbling as it spun in a tight circle only just out of arm's reach.

Above her, four eyes stared. Taylor looked up, meeting the Endbringer's stare though really, all she wanted to do was curl up in a ball and hide.

{New Primary Directive to Unit-02 from Host-Queen_Administrator. Query: Override Primary Directive from Host-High_Priest?}

"What?" she said, her voice lost in the churning of the waters around her.

The Endbringer, Leviathan, shifted, his bulky upper body swaying in time with his too-long arms. The voice returned, though it wasn't a voice, it wasn't something she heard but rather a... noise in her mind. {Unit-02, Local Designation 'Leviathan.' Confirming new Primary Directive from Host-Queen_Administrator. Query: Override Primary Directive from Host-High_Priest?}

Taylor Hebert was many things. She knew that she was not the brightest, she knew that she was ugly, and too tall, and the no one really liked her. But she was not a fool. She had read her mother's books, about Faustian deals and talking to gods, and if there were gods roaming around the unfair world around her, then the creature towering above was one of them.

"W-what's the primary directive?" she asked. There was no shame for the whimper in her voice, or her stutter. This was probably just another prank, a joke that would end with her splattered against some building.

{Host-Queen_Administrator requesting Primary Directive of Host-High_Priest. Directive as follows: 'Challenge me.' Directive interpretation as follows: Use abilities to destabilize local lifeform economy, ecology and social systems. Limit aggression to within survivable levels to local population.}

She shivered once the... once Leviathan finished. "That's horrible."

Leviathan stared and Taylor Hebert spoke with courage born of fear. "Don't do that anymore, please? Just, stop."

{Understood. Primary Directive Override Accepted. New Primary Directive?}

Taylor clutched her hands around her chest, eyes turning down and away from the monster. "I, I don't--"

Beams of white-ish light slammed into Leviathan and the water around him sending great gouts of steam into the air. Taylor threw herself down and back, shielding her head with her arms until the attack subsided only to start again from another angle.

She screamed in the ground, face pressed into the wet asphalt while the world around her exploded again and again until, finally, it stopped for just a few seconds. "Girl, get out of there!" A woman's voice called out to her.

Taylor looked up and there was a woman in an all-black suit hugging a curvy figure accentuated by red lines that ran across her costume. She was flying towards her, eyes wide in panic as she tried to reach the girl within the Endbringer's grasp.

"Grab my hand!" the cape called.

A pillar of water tore out of the sea around Taylor and engulfed the flyer like the hand of a watery god. The water turned red a moment before the pillar was sucked back down into the teaming mass.

"Oh god," Taylor said.

{Unit-02 requesting New Primary Directive.}

Taylor looked at Leviathan, her mouth shaped in a little 'o.' It was too soon to think of all the ramifications. Other capes would come, they would see her talking to him, talking to the enemy. They would hurt her and her dad, blame her for what the Endbringer had done.

That cape had just died trying to save the one person that didn't deserve it.

"Just, leave me alo--" she started but stopped. "No, I mean." She licked lips made salty by ocean water. "Hide. I, I need to think, s-so hide."

{Confirming New Primary Directive for Unit-02 from Host-Queen_Administrator: remain concealed. Return to Host-Queen_Administrator for further Directives. Directive Accepted.}

And just like that Leviathan was gone. She had seen him move, barely, a blur of green and grey that sped off, skimming above the water like the world's biggest water strider. The water around her flowed away, dropping down as it drained down the streets yet still maintained a perfect bubble or dryness around her.

Taylor stood, shivering in the middle of the street while a few capes zipped by. Some spared a glance her way, but she was just an obvious if lucky civilian, or maybe, at worse, a newly triggered parahuman. She wouldn't be the first one left in the Endbringer's wake.

"Oh god," Taylor said.

***

The camps set up by FEMA and the National Guard were, at the best of times, rather chaotic. The people that had been evacuated from endbringer shelters were funneled towards the nearest camp where men and women in uniform tried to keep track of everyone.

There was this air of relief, that those shambling across the ruined city were those that had survived. Sure, Brockton Bay was in ruins, but it could be rebuilt.

The camp that Taylor found herself in was right next to a crumbling supermarket. She had been assigned to a tent last night along with three dozen other girls of about her age. She never even learned their names before falling asleep on the cot within.

The next morning, she found herself a little hungry, and maybe in need of a shower, but really she couldn't complain. Everyone was still rather quiet after yesterday's attack. The FEMA people said that they were waiting for a delivery from Boston to arrive, that there would be more tents and supplies and things later and that they all just had to be patient.

That morning she had gone to the Wall, a huge poster board where the names of the deceased were being pinned as more bodies were found. Her dad's name hadn't appeared on there, yet.

And so Taylor Hebert found herself standing alone near the camp's exit when the voice returned. {Unit-02 requesting further Directives.}

Taylor nearly jumped out of her skin and a few curious heads turned at the sound of her squeak. She had, until then, hoped that yesterday had been a fever dream, that what she thought had happened really didn't.

"Okay, okay, calm down," she whispered to herself. So, Leviathan was still around, but not attacking, else the sirens would go off again and there would certainly be more people panicking. Which meant that it, he, had listened to her and was probably hiding... hiding inside Brockton Bay.

"Oh shit," she said. Looking around to make sure no one was paying attention, she walked out of the camp with brisk steps, her head down and hood up to cover her face. "Um, can you hear me?" she whispered.

{Affirmative. Unit-02 within Host-Queen_Administrator's range.}

"W-where are you?" she said before looking around. She didn't know what her range was, for that matter she wasn't sure what a Queen Administrator was either except that Leviathan, or Unit 02 seemed to refer to her as such.

{Unit-02 is 727 meters east of Host-Queen_Administrator.}

Taylor searched for a few seconds, taking in the street she was on and comparing it to her mental map of the city. East was always the direction the ocean was in, so that was easy enough. Falling into a quick jog, she began to make her closer to the Endbringer. "This is so weird."

Six blocks down and she found herself out of breath, gasping from the short run. "Are you close?"

{Unit-02 is 79 meters north-east of Host-Queen_Administrator.}

Taylor looked around, then found the broken down and waterlogged remains of an underground parking garage. She was closer to the Boardwalk now, or at least where the Boardwalk had been before Leviathan had come around.

The inside of the garage was damp and smelled of mold and rot, but it was quiet save for the gentle lapping of water. There was a ramp leading down to the floor below, but it was filled with brackish water that shone in what little light was pouring in from the entrance behind her.

The water shifted and moved, then a head as tall as she was gently rose until it was even with her. She couldn't stop the little gasp that escaped her, the jolt of fear shooting down her spine as four green eyes took her in. Her entire life the Endbringers had been spoken of in terrified whispers, the city killers, the monsters that had destroyed entire nations and reaped countless lives. And now one of them was staring at her almost... placidly.

She wasn't quite sure how she was associating emotions to Leviathan's emotionless face, but she felt as though he was just... waiting for her to tell him what to do, like a well-trained puppy.

Taylor almost giggled at the mental image of Leviathan as a cute little puppy. A thirty-foot-tall puppy that could summon tsunamis. Maybe she could get him a collar? Would people react if they saw her walking the Endbringer with a leesh?

Shaking her head to clear her mind from the absurd thoughts, Taylor took to inspecting the unmoving Endbringer. Leviathan seemed content to just stand there while she took in his green-grey skin and glowing green eyes.

"So, um, hi?"

{Unit-02 greets Host-Queen_Administrator. Query: New Directives?}

Taylor's mind went blank. Endbringers were the thing heroes fought against. What in the world was she supposed to tell it to do. Maybe she could have it walk over to the PRT and... just let them do whatever to it.

It made sense. If they could dissect Leviathan, they could find out how to get rid of the other Endbringers too... but that just felt so wrong. He hadn't done anything bad. Well, not to her, she reasoned. He was just following directives. Was it a dog's fault that it hurt someone if its master told it to attack?

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

Instead, Taylor asked a question. "Why, why are you listening to me?"

{Host-Queen_Administrator possesses Administrative Control over Unit-02.}

"How?"

{Host-Queen_Administrator is Host to Queen_Administrator.}

She blinked. Leviathan shifted. "What's a host? Like, like a parahuman?"

{Affirmative.}

"I'm a parahuman?"

{Affirmative.}

"I'm a cape?!" Taylor barked.

{Affirmative.}

Taylor leaned against a nearby pillar, her legs feeling wobbly under her. Of course, in a way it kind of made sense. She knew about triggers, at least a bit from what she'd learned in school. She... couldn't point to when she had gained powers, but that didn't matter, not really. "My parahuman power is to control you?" she squeaked in near-horror.

{Host-Queen_Administrator Administrates All Units within Range. Set Directives. Host-Queen_Administrator can not take direct control.}

"So I can't... master you?" Taylor swallowed. The idea of mastering an Endbringer was a bit much. "But I can tell you what to do?"

{Affirmative.}

"Like a dog?"

{...Affirmative.}

"I always wanted a dog," she said to no one in particular. Her mind was, at that point, swimming through a morass of strange ideas. She slapped herself across the cheek. "Okay, okay. So, uh, you need a new directive, right?"

{Host-Queen_Administrator can assign new Directives.}

"And if I don't?"

{Unit-02 returns to previous Primary Directive.}

"Oh shit," Taylor whispered, imagining the Endbringer attacking the Bay while the city was filled with refugees and blocked roads. It would be a massacre made all the worse because no one was expecting it. Would all the heroes that just left come back? Worse, if she died would he revert again?

Biting her lower lip, Taylor looked up at the creature before her. "You, you have to keep me safe. And, and do that without killing anyone... unless they're trying really kill me." She frowned, thinking back to something she had read a while ago. "Don't hurt anyone unless they're about to hurt me. And you have to listen and do as I say. And... and you have to protect yourself, unless it goes against the other two things."

Leviathan paused for just a moment before replying. {New Primary Directives as follows: Primary One: Unit-02 must secure Host-Queen_Administrator. Unit-02 must follow any secondary Directives from Host-Queen_Administrator. Primary Two: Unit-02 must refrain from causing harm to other Hosts or locals except in the act of completing Primary One. Primary Three: Unit-02 must protect itself from harm unless this violates Primary One or Primary Two.}

"Right," Taylor agreed. It made sense. She could do this. Heck, she had dreamed of being a cape, and now she was. Oh, sure, she didn't have a cool power like Alexandria,or even something practical like most Tinkers, but hers was still pretty good. For a moment she imagined Principal Blackwell telling her that there was nothing that could be done about the bullying while Leviathan stared at her from outside her office window.

She could work with this.

She couldn't join the Protectorate or Wards, they would take her Leviathan away. Taylor frowned and tried to think past the pounding of blood in her head. Yeah, she had to protect her Leviathan, that made sense and it was only fair. He would protect her too.

"I'll need a costume," she whispered, then giggled. "You'll need a costume too," she told Leviathan.

She had the impression that the Endbringer shrugged, though really it only shifted a little in the water. Then her stomach growled and she realised that she was wasting time. "Uh, you'll be safe here, right?"

{Affirmative.}

"Cool, I'll... just go find something to eat, okay?"

{Affirmative.}

With a timid smile, Taylor backed out of the parking garage and into the street. It was rather desolate, with no one in sight. This was one of the streets housing warehouses for all the stores on the Boardwalk, it wasn't as pretty or as accessible as the Boardwalk itself and there wasn't anything really worth looting here. Leviathan had picked a good place to hide.

She stared to walk back towards the camp, hoping that there was something available to eat there, when she heard a loud splashing sound from right behind her and felt a few drops landing on her head.

Turning, Taylor had to look up to the Endbringer standing just a few feet behind her. She blinked up at it, then walked backwards for a half dozen steps. She wondered how something so big had moved so quietly, and quickly.

He took one step towards her, cutting the distance back down. "W-what are you doing?"

{Unit-02 following Primary Directive One.}

"You're following me?" She looked around, making sure that there wasn't anyone else around. "Okay, that... might be bad. Just, uh." Her eyes alighted on a broken down warehouse, one wall crumbling apart to reveal the interior. "I have an idea."

Ten minutes later, Taylor found herself the proud owner of an only-slightly-stolen roll of some sort of industrial canvas. It was a fairly thick material in some off-white colour with some water stains along the bottom but it would serve.

Unrolling it on the ground, Taylor began to try and tear a long piece of the material apart when a clawed hand reached over her shoulder and sliced into the canvas. "Thanks!" she said to Leviathan as she pulled at the roughly square piece of canvas. "Could you cut out another square, about this big?" she asked, making a gesture with her hands about shoulder width apart.

Finally, Taylor had two pieces of rough cloth cut into squares, one about a dozen times bigger than the other. "Okay, so, take that piece," she pointed to the large square and waited until Leviathan grabbed it in one giant clawed hand. "Right, now tie it like this." With a bit of fumbling, Taylor took the smaller piece and wrapped it around her lower face then tied it behind her head. When she was done, she looked up to see that the Endbringer was now wearing his makeshift bandana over the bottom of his face.

She blinked. It looked like it wanted to rob a huge bank. "This is never going to work," she muttered, voice muffled by the halfmask. Still, she figured it would protect her identity, at the very least. And maybe people wouldn't take Leviathan quite as seriously is he was wearing a bandana.

"Okay, so, stay here, okay?"

{Override Primary Directive One? Query: Revert to previous Primary Directive?}

Taylor blanched and any humour at seeing Leviathan with a mask on fled along with all the blood in her face. "Um, no, no, don't do that. Just, try to be subtle? Make it so that people don't notice you, if you can."

{Understood.}

She stared at the unmoving Endbringer, then back along the road she had been heading down. "Okay then." With a deep breath to centre herself. She started down the street, looking over her shoulder every so often to make sure Leviathan was still where she had left him.

Then, she made it around an intersection and calmed down a little when he didn't follow. So far, so good, she thought before speeding up a bit. The streets were rough, with new potholes and craters torn into them where the fighting had passed. More than one building had been torn apart and debris filled the roads, but a passageway had been cleared down the middle at some point, so she stuck to the road.

A few minutes later, when she was only four blocks away from the camp, she heard the rumbling of trucks and had to step aside as a convoy of half a dozen black vans with FEMA and PRT markings on their sides rumbled past. She stared, wide-eyed at the heroes standing atop the moving trucks, recognizing Assault and Battery from the local PRT and Kid Win and Gallant from the Wards program.

Gallant waved at her as they passed, and she waved back shyly. It wasn't every day she got to see heroes in the flesh and she was a little starstruck as the convoy moved past. Then she remembered that she was a cape now too.

With a timid smile, Taylor followed after the convoy but quickly lost them from sight. They were probably bringing supplies to the various camps anyway, so maybe she would get to meet them later.

It was as she walked down the next block that she heard the unmistakable noise of capes fighting. There were explosions and the pat-pat of Tinkertech guns firing.

Taylor paused. She should turn, and hide or go the long way around. But the idea that she could make a difference was weighing on her shoulders. Licking past dry lips, Taylor jogged forwards then slowed down at the next intersection.

Poking her head around the corner, she took in the scene with untrained eyes.

The convoy had stopped in its tracks, and the reason was plain to see. Metal swords were jutting out of the ground in the middle of the road, spikes a dozen feet tall that pointed right at the foremost truck.

In the air stood Rune and Stormtiger, the two of them riding on a cement slab while hundreds of rocks spun around the villainous cape like asteroids around a planet. Stormtiger was slashing the air with his arms and sending long gashes of compressed air out towards cowering PRT agents in full armour.

Kaiser was dodging blows from Assault, ducking and weaving out of the way while sharpened spikes of steel tore out of the ground towards the hero. Battery, meanwhile, was running towards Fenja, one of the giant twins who was even now spinning her spear around in great slicing arcs.

Gallant and Kid Win were closer to the convoy, the knight-like hero firing brilliant blasts from his hands towards a group of thugs in E88 colours. Above him, Kid Win was floating on his hoverboard and firing his twin pistols at Cricket who was narrowly avoiding every shot while running full-tilt towards Gallant.

Hookwolf was laughing as he turned into a gigantic wolf made of spinning blades and began lopping towards the wards.

Taylor took a deep breath, her brow scrunching up as she tried to think as quickly as she could. It was the sight of Gallant turning tail and running away from an enraged Hookwolf that made up her mind.

She ran out from behind cover, pulling up her hood and making sure that her bandanna covered her face as she did so. A few of the PRT people looked her way, but they were a little busy with the Empire capes and thugs to take action against a lone civilian.

Taylor stopped a few dozen meters away from the worse of the fighting and filled her lungs with air. "Stop!" she shouted.

Hookwolf laughed maniacally as he shrugged off Gallant's desperate barrage of bolts. Fenja finally clipped Battery and sent the heroine rolling across the ground while behind the giantess, Kaiser managed to push Assault away thanks to a wall of spikes that sprouted underfoot.

"I said stop! Please."

Rune shot a piece of concrete at the nearest truck, a chunk nearly as tall as Taylor that rammed into the side of the truck and exploded into head-sized bits of shrapnel. One of these bounced on the road, then rocketed off towards where a wide-eyed Taylor stood.

Kid Win, Rune and Stormtiger all watched the piece heading towards the rather unassuming civilian.

There was a meaty smack, and Taylor blinked at the huge hand blocking her vision and, she realized, holding the piece of concrete like she would hold a pebble. "Oh," she said to the Endbringer standing behind her.

The fighting stopped.

Taylor bent down a little to see past Leviathan's hand, then she pressed a hand against it and pushed up. The Endbringer complied and moved his arm out of the way, letting the concrete slab fall down as he did so.

"So, uh, I really, really wanted you guys to stop fighting, please?" Taylor said, her voice dwindling as she saw all the attention being pointed her way.

Assault was the first to react by pointing a finger towards Leviathan. "Is that... Leviathan?"

Taylor looked over her shoulder to confirm that, yes, there was a thirty foot tall Endbringer right there. "Uh, no?" she said. She realized that she might have made a mistake.

Kaiser stepped up, his form covered in interlocking plates of steel with jagged spikes jutting out everywhere. He stood tall and pointed the flat of his hand towards Taylor. "Fool girl, you think you can get away with using such illusions against the Empire? It is in bad taste!"

With a flick of his wrist he send a row of sword-like spikes running across the ground, each one growing closer and closer towards Taylor in a straight path that would, in a few seconds, impale the girl.

A nearby storm-drain exploded into the air, followed by a column of water three feet wide that shot through the ground with enough force that it started to tear through the road around the drain. The water twisted in the air, turning nearly ninety degrees in a blink.

There were a few screams of horror as the jet of water slammed into Kaiser. The villain rammed side-first into the brick facade of a store.

The water splashed onto the ground, no longer manipulated by the Endbringer only for it to form a massive puddle that more than one hero and villain shied away from.

Bits of Kaiser's armour tumbled to the ground.

It was rather quiet until Taylor turned around and pointed at the Endbringer. "No, bad Leviathan, bad!"

{Accomplishing Primary One.} The Endbringer said as it rocked back onto its heels a little.

Taylor patted its knee, which was about as high as she could reach without stretching. "I know, I know, you just wanted to keep me safe, but try not to kill people, even if they're Nazis, okay?"

Leviathan looked down at her, his bandanna rustling with the motion. {Affirmative.}

Taylor nodded, then paused mid-motion as she remembered her audience. "Uh, right, um... surrender, please?" she asked.